Can DataAssist wizard include "product options"?

Hi

This is only my second attempt at working with databases (the first went OK), so please bear with me!

The site I'm developing needs products, and category and colour options.

I've been following the DA Getting Started Guide, and succeeded in setting up a set of Product_Results/Insert/Update/Detail pages. However, as I want also to be able to include product colours, I tried running the wizard again (having first moved the resulting files to another folder).

It looks to me as though productionoptions doesn't have a column in the products table (as productcategories does). Instead, the foreign key (if I've got this right!) has to go through the productoptions table in order to be linked to the options table. Is that right?

I did try setting the ProductID as a menu item dynamically linked to OptionID (in a similar way to that done with productcategories), but Dreamweaver crashed mid-way through creating the first of the pages.

I wonder if the wizard would work if I added a column OptionID to the products table. Or have I got this completely wrong?!

I'd be very grateful for any help/advice you can offer.

Thanks
Alistair
PS I've populated the options table with data
e.g.
1 Blue
2 Red
3 Grey
etc.
so there are data to pull in.

The product pages that you create using the wizard can be modified to handle product options, but the wizard will not be able to do this for you.
you would need to use the manage relational table behavior insert to the product options table the options that are availbale for the particular product.

you would first create a recordset to return all options from the options table.
add a checkbox to the page and set the value to use the options ID from the recordset. Add a repeat region around the recordet so that a checkbox will be created for each one.

you can then add the manage relational table behavior to the page so store the selections for the product in the productoptions table.

Hi Jason
Thanks for your advice.

1. I've gone back to the previous set of files created by the DA Wizard and created a recordset, which I've called rs_getOptions. This then populates a list of options with checkboxes on the Insert page (via repeat region on a <ul>).

2. I've added a Manage Relational Table behaviour to the page
(it shows as Manage Relational Table (productoptions) in the Server Behaviors list), and despite trying both 'Button Insert pressed' and 'any form post' as triggers, only the Products table is being updated; nothing appears in the productoptions table.

As I'm probably doing something wrong in the Manage Relational Table wizard I've attached screenshots of my entries so you can see what I've done.

Thanks!
Alistair

can you send a copy of your page so I can inspect the code.

Thanks, Jason

Here it is now.

On step 2, choose the WADA_Insert_products session variable instead of the WADAInsertRecordID form element

Of course, silly me! Thanks!

So, the productoption table is now updated, and I've fixed another problem so that the OptionGroupID is correctly inserted.

However, currently the productoptions table is entering all 16 options, regardless of which checkboxes were ticked. Presumably the insert code needs to enter either 1 or 0 to ensure that only the chosen options are inserted into the productoptions table.

So you can see what I'm talking about, here is the header and some lines from the productoptions table. Although only a few of these option were selected, they are all appearing in the table:
ProductOptionID ProductID OptionID OptionGroupID OptionPriceIncrement
33 9 1 1 NULL
34 9 2 1 NULL
35 9 3 1 NULL
36 9 4 1 NULL
37 9 5 1 NULL
38 9 6 1 NULL
39 9 7 1 NULL
40 9 8 1 NULL
41 9 9 1 NULL
...

I've looked through the code and can't see where one would modify the SQL insert to show 0,1 (if indeed this is the right way of doing it anyway). Or perhaps there needs to be an "if checkbox is selected insert; else do nothing".

(I'm about to add similar modifications to the products_Detail and products_Update pages so we can see which options have been chosen for any particular product. I think I can work out what to do for these, but we'll see!)

Here's the most recent version of the products_Insert page.

Thanks for your continued help.

On step three of the manage relational table, set the Options From Field to use the Color checkboxes instead of the WADA_RepeatID_OptionID